The House of Radio

Vive National Radio! Nicolas Philibert’s funny, affectionate montage of dedicated individuals at work in Paris’s massive Maison de la Radio is an audiovisual hymn to aural artistry and delight. A gleefully jaded news editor flips through the day’s grisliest headlines, a drama producer fine-tunes her actors like musical instruments, a chatty phone operator shrewdly susses out talkback callers, a Tour de France commentator rides pillion, Umberto Eco considers his next word, an Aussie hip hop band makes world music on Paris radio: the breadth of civilisation emanating from within these walls, and out into the world at large, seems infinite and exhilarating. Philibert is well established as a savvy chronicler of abundant life within closed environments (To Be and To Have) and the wealth of communication generated by sensory deprivation (In the Land of the Deaf).